bplay

bplay is a sound player and recorder for Linux. The current stable version is bplay-0.991, which is no longer being developed but may receive occasional maintenance releases. However, bplay2 is currently under development and is a complete rewrite of the original code. Major differences between the two versions include the replacement of multiple processes with a single multithreaded process, the ability to transform audio formats on the fly, and a more modular approach to file format interpretation. The code should now work properly on big-endian machines, whereas previously it only supported x86 architecture.

Although there is currently no downloadable version of bplay2 because the code is still in a state of disarray, plans for the future include merging endian fixes into the code and rearranging the source to allow the addition of non-OSS platforms. AIX is expected to be the first platform added. The code also needs to become 64-bit clean, which will require the development of a test harness for all conversion code. Unfortunately, the only 64-bit machine available for testing has no sound hardware. Despite these challenges, bplay and bplay2 both offer valuable sound recording and playback capabilities for Linux users.